Technical Field
The solution disclosed in this document generally relates to the field of telecommunications. Particularly, the solution here disclosed relates to radio telecommunication networks, and even more particularly to mobile radio telecommunication networks.
Overview of the Related Art
Radio telecommunication networks, particularly mobile radio telecommunication networks, comprise a Radio Access Network (RAN), based on one or more Radio Access Technologies (RATs, e.g. 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G as defined by the 3GPP—Third Generation Partnership Project), and a core network. Network nodes of a mobile RAN, as an example radio base stations or micro/pico nodes of micro/pico network cells (e.g., eNodeBs of Long Term Evolution—LTE—and LTE—Advanced—LTE-A-networks), from now on named indistinctly as nodes, in their operative context do not make use of information based on and/or representative of the topographical environment, descriptive of the urban environment and/or the orography of the geographic territory subtended by the nodes in terms of geometrical description of buildings, infrastructures and any type of scenario into which they operate. On the other hand, such information is important for the aim of the electromagnetic field propagation etc.
In some implementations, as for example described in FR 2997813 A1, the nodes may collect information and measurements related to the radio signal strength or quality together with geolocation information of a single measurement sample or a group of measurements samples. The collected information and measurements can be used to derive a partial knowledge of the topographical environment (e.g., to identify areas where the radio coverage is poor or to infer the existence of main streets/buildings) by observing degradation of system performances due to propagation and traffic, but the use of the collected information and measurements is not intended to allow the node detect the root causes related to the territory topography.
Position planning and radio signal propagation analysis over the topographical environment in which the nodes operate are processes performed outside of the nodes; the generic node is not made aware of these sets of information, it is not informed about what is the environment where it is operating and, as a consequence, the node cannot make use of these pieces of information to take decisions in its operational activity.
Also, relationships with neighboring nodes do not take into account the knowledge of the environmental conditions where each of the neighboring nodes operates.
In general, nowadays the normal way of working of mobile radio telecommunication networks, as far as network nodes are concerned, can be summarized into the following sets of operations:                management of the nodes and/or network and system configuration, intended as the activities performed at the Operation & Maintenance (O&M) level for the purposes of the maintenance of the nodes; an example can be the updating of the list of adjacencies of a node;        occasional operations, such as for example the deployment on the field of new RATs, that change sporadically during the life cycle of the nodes;        real time operations used both to manage User Equipment (UE), for example inter-cell handover used to manage (in real time and on the basis of the operative context) a moving UE in a specified time frame and to adapt the nodes configuration based on e.g. load conditions or traffic information.        
However, a node can perform interference status management over its own territory only once the node has the knowledge of the interference situation reported by measurements performed by UE during connection or when a UE requires a service to the node.
In J. van de Beek, T. Cai, S. Grimoud, P. Mähönen, J. Nasreddine, J. Riihijärvi, B. Sayrac, “How a layered REM architecture brings cognition to today's mobile networks”, IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine, August 2012 the concept of REM—Radio Environment Map—is discussed and analyzed. REM has been deeply analyzed within the frame of the FARAMIR project (http://www.ict-faramir.eu/). In the introduction of the paper, the authors state “A REM can be thought of as a knowledge base used to dynamically store information related to the radio environment of wireless systems. This information can either be represented by raw radio field measurements or, more efficiently, as the result of modeling processes such as statistical behavioral descriptions. REMs are currently being studied and specified in ETSI's emerging standard on Reconfigurable Radio Systems. In contrast to the static databases used in 3G and LTE systems, REMs provide a wireless network with a comprehensive and up-to-date representation of the radio environment including dynamic knowledge on propagation environment, which can be used to optimize radio resources”.
The degrees of freedom, intended as a set of technologies and parameters that a node is able to configure in different ways in order to satisfy UE service requests, can be listed in:                available RATs, as an example LTE/LTE-A, HSPA (High-Speed Packet Access), etc.;        available frequency bands and allowed channels, per RAT;        list of adjacent nodes where to direct or redirect the UE by means of handover operations;        list of antenna systems and beams per RAT equipping the node, where in this context a beam can be fixed or steerable.        
In any case, whatever the selected node configuration is, it does not take into account any information coming from the environmental radio propagation conditions experimented by the radio signals emitted by the node and/or similar radio signals propagation aspects regarding neighboring network nodes.
Under these conditions, at present, the decisions that a node can make about the best choice of configuration to adopt for what is relevant to a service request coming from a served UE, or for a service request coming from a to-be-served UE, for a certain UE mode (for example: idle mode, connected mode) are not based on any a-priori internal knowledge regarding the status of the environmental radio propagation condition, the UE and the geographical distribution of the load over the node operation area, and do not take into account neighboring nodes' operation area over the environmental operative context.
To date, the knowledge a node has of its own operational area does not include information regarding the topography of the environment and an a-priori coverage/interference information about the topography, but at most includes information collected only by UE in connected mode during their activity.
WO 2013/127355 A1 describes a modality to collect measurements by UE in order to build a REM Map and to use it to allocate node's resources.
US 2012/0122476 A1 deals with the creation of geo context info data set, collecting spatial information, sensor data and context in order to provide spatial based services to a UE.
US 2015/0326994 A1 is related to a UE profiling even if data relevant to the characterization of the electromagnetic environment are indicated too.
M. Proebster et al., “Context-aware resource allocation for cellular wireless networks”, EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking 2012, 2012:216 (http://jwcn.eurasipjournals.com/content/2012/1/216), is relevant to the definition of a Radio Resource Management (RRM) procedure based on the context where the UE is; also in this case information collected by the UE are transferred to the node where are elaborated and used to optimize decisions at RRM level.
FR 2997813 A1, already cited above, deals with the definition of a procedure for the optimization of the node's coverage on the base of the collections of measurements taken by the UE. Measurements are then referenced to the topography of the served area and used to optimize coverage, as an example to fill holes in coverage.